I turned on save on focus lost and everytime I run the command palette it forces a save and automatically closes the command palette if there are changes. Shouldn't save on focus lost only save when moving from the current tab and the command palette shouldn't force a save? Also is there a setting so save on focus lost only saves if that sublime window loses focus to another application (or a different sublime window not a group but a completely different window). Then it will only save (all windows) when the focus moves away from the window instead of just the single buffer.

I have just noticed this behaviour, while editing Markdown files with the Markdown Editing package, Sublime Text re-renders the preview for the Markdown file whenever the file is saved, and having that happen every time I open the Command Palette is maddening.

Is it really the intended behaviour of this feature to auto-save on invocation of the Command Palette?

This happens for me too, but not just for the command palette - opening the find/replace, console, or anything that takes control of the cursor causes Webpack to rebuild and throw a bunch of errors (because it saved my WIP even though I didn't actually change focus.